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Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.
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To some, the Chicago teachers’ strike that ended Tuesday proves what they’ve been saying all along: That the teachers and their unions, when you get right down to it, care more about protecting bad teachers, seniority and pay than they do about what is good for kids.
So it’s no surprise that people who hold those views also think the most important reform we should pursue is to use standardized test results to identify our worst teachers. And, of course, they will get behind any measure that will weaken the unions generally.
Those people are just plain wrong. Their “reform” agenda has driven our teachers into a bunker — a bunker that teachers have invited their unions to join because they now think the unions are the only friends they have left.
No nation has ever fired its way to a top-quality teaching staff. No nation has gotten to the top of the world’s education league tables by going to war with its teacher unions. And there is no country in the world that has produced a first-class education system by firing its worst teachers.
There’s only one way to catch up to the countries that are beating the pants off us in the world’s education sweepstakes: Ensure that every student in this country has a first-rate teacher. That, in fact, is the strategy that the top-performing countries have been using. Not a single one of them is worried about getting rid of the worst teachers because they have a surplus of great teachers. Not a single one of them is at war with their teachers unions — though many of them have very strong unions — because their “reform” strategies haven’t driven their teachers into a bunker.
So let’s take a moment to look at what the top-performing countries have done to fill their schools with top-quality teachers. They have greatly raised the standards to get into their teacher-education institutions. In the top 10 countries, the ratio of applications to acceptances in those colleges is on the order of 8 to 1. It is about as hard to get into their teacher-education programs as it is to get into institutions training doctors, architects and engineers.
Of course, to do that, they have to pay their teachers well. In most of these countries, beginning teachers are paid what beginning engineers are paid. In the United States, by contrast, a large fraction of beginning teachers are paid a wage that doesn’t permit them to support a small family above the poverty line.
The top-performing countries insist that their teachers master the subjects they’ll teach. In many of these countries, elementary-school teachers teach either math and science or their native language and social studies, and they are required to have a college minor (if not a major) in these subjects.
Meanwhile, we fill our elementary-school classrooms with teachers who have never taken a college-level course in math and who do not understand the subject very well. We celebrate teacher-training programs that educate teachers in their craft in just a few weeks.
The top-performing countries believe it takes at least a year to learn the craft. They’re moving teacher training from their low-status higher-education institutions into their research universities, and they’re giving their teachers research skills so they can play key roles in improving curriculum and instruction.
The United States has long had policies designed to recruit our teachers from the least able of our high-school graduates, while our competitors have been pursuing policies designed to recruit from the top tier of high-school graduates. Is it any wonder that their students are outperforming ours?
It seems to me cruel, pointless and counterproductive to now hold U.S. teachers to account for the poor performance of our children. Maybe we should consider holding them accountable for student performance once we pay them well, train them well, give them the tools they need to do the job, offer them the same kinds of career opportunities that we offer high-status professionals and show them that we trust them to do their work well.
If we treat our teachers as professionals and involve them in managing the enterprise, our unions will no longer feel constrained to act like early 20th-century industrial unions.
Maybe when we finally treat our teachers as professionals, we will get the performance from them that we will then have a right to expect. If we put our shoulder to the wheel to fill our schools with great teachers, our children will once again top the world’s education league tables.
Marc Tucker is president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington.
Charter schools, home schooling, and vouchers are the answers to better education for students. Not unions and strikes.
CarmineD
This article's writer,Marc Tucker, makes the following statement with no qualifications: "Meanwhile, we fill our elementary-school classrooms with teachers who have never taken a college-level course in math and who do not understand the subject very well. We celebrate teacher-training programs that educate teachers in their craft in just a few weeks."
The facts are, that before being granted a teaching license or teaching credential, teachers who are pursuing careers in the field, must attend and master college and university level mathematics, and they are tested for their content proficiencies via exams as the PRAXIS and others. If a person doesn't earn passing scores, they certainly will not be licensed to teach in that state. Each state has their own Department of Education and standards, and THAT is where some of the potentially problem teachers can be screened, for their worthiness to teach in that state.
What we ARE seeing these days, is the use of long term substitute teachers and those who have not specifically trained to be professional teachers (as Teach for America "teachers"), due to the national economic crash and resulting state budgetary cuts. There is an inherent risk in having such individuals in our public classrooms and expecting them to teach as a trained and qualified teacher does. Little of this wide-spread practice is ever mentioned in the media. The taxpayer public is unaware of this practice nor of the ramifications of it that contribute to "educational woes" we are witnessing throughout the land.
Consider this: who is more dedicated as a teacher---one who has deliberately planned and trained for this as their personal career; or the one who just happens to be "available" to fill in on occassion???
Blessings and Peace,
Star
Junk article unsupported by the standing science...
Ballou and Podgursky, among many others, show that paying more for teachers does not produce better teachers... we only end up recruiting from the same pool.
Yes, firing bad teachers improves the quality of education. Peterson, Hoxby and others have stated that teacher quality matters far more than teacher quantity. Eliminating low quality teachers from the profession means more students end up with better teachers.
Finally, there is no evidence that the unions treat teachers as professionals. Few professions get protected from bad behavior, incompetence or are guaranteed pay regardless of competence or effectiveness... Unions treat teachers as pawns, a means to their own ends and that is union power over politics. Unions are responsible for the meaningless teacher certifications, professional training and more that infuriates teachers and burdens them with hours of meaningless paperwork and classwork.
@Patrick. How do you determine who is a "bad teacher"? In Nevada, only 33% of teachers have tested subjects. What does a "bad teacher" look like? If you are going to use data from one test, how do you factor out the kids who are bad test takers, have a grudge against a teacher and don't want to do well? How do you measure growth, if a student isn't at grade level when a teacher get that student?
A simple question. Which teacher is a better teacher. An AP math teacher has all students pass the math proficiency test. A pre-algebra teacher whose students raise their scores, but not all students pass the test. Tell me, which one should be fired as a "bad teacher"?
Please cite your sources for your claim that unions don't treat teachers aa professionals.
@Patrick. Please explain to me how teacher unions are responsible for "meaningless teacher certifications"? Last time I looked, the states determine the requirements for teacher certifications and license, not unions.
Professional training and development is run by the school district, not by the union. In order to renew a teaching license, the state requires teachers to have additional college credits. How is that caused by the union?
Please explain what you mean by "meaningless classwork and paperwork". I don't understand that comment.
OK Marc, explain this: teachers have demanded higher wages (50% higher than the average with same skills) BECAUSE they deal with all the other issues students have. Do we get to cut compensation by 33%?
And, it's rather common knowledge that the rest of the world (save Switzerland's 2,000 student sd) spends LESS than the U.S. for K-12. Common sense that they put some of the cost of K-12 into books, computers, paper....NOT teacher compensation.